The real date of birth of Jesus Christ
«Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the time of King Herodotus». With these words the Gospel of Matthew (2,1) announces the event that literally split history in two, so much so that today most of the countries in the world (including Türkiye, Israel and the Republic of China) use to divide the years in before Christ and after Christ.
But when exactly did this event take place?
According to tradition the birth of Christ happened on December 25th of the year Zero. This temporal collocation is erroneous because the year Zero never existed. Actually the year 1 AD (1 year after the year Zero) immediately followed the year 1 BC (the year before the year Zero). This is why the 20th century ended on December 31, 2000 (not 1999), and the XXI began on January 1, 2001.
Ancient astronomers, to simplify their calculations, introduce the year Zero.
And that's not all. It was the Scythian monk Dionysius the Small, who lived in the 6th century, to establish the date of Christ's birth in the year 754 after the foundation of Rome, which since then became 1 AD. But the analysis of the sources at our disposal, in particular of the Romanized Jew Josephus, has led modern historians to place the death of Herodotus the Great, the one who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, in the year 750 of Rome (4 BC).
Therefore the birth of Jesus must necessarily be prior to this date. Herodotus ordered to murder all the children of Bethlehem up to the age of two (Mt 2.16) and Jesus survived it: this means that Jesus was born at least in 6 BC. But on what date? Certainly not December 25th. Certainly much of the poetry of Christmas is linked to the landscape snowy in which the Neapolitan nativity scenes are set, but the presence of shepherds with their herds in the open as Luke 2.8 points out rather against a winter date. In reality, another event recorded in the Gospel of Matthew allows us a much more precise dating: the famous "Star" of the Three Wise Men (Mt 2.1 and 2.9).
Giotto, who had attended the passage of Halley's Comet in 1302, three years later represented in the Nativity of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua the popular "Star" as a comet (and it appears as such in most nativity scenes). In reality no comet known today crossed the Earth and was visible in the Syro-Palestinian region between 6 BC and 1 AD. Halley's Comet itself, despite being mentioned in the Talmud, reached the perihelion in the year 11 BC: too early, therefore. Astronomers have often referred to the star of the Magi as a very long-period comet, one of those that cross the internal Solar System only every hundred thousand years; but the Czech astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) suggests a different hypothesis.
According to him, the star sighted by the Magi (probably Zoroastrian priests) in the East was the great conjunction of planets Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred in 7 BC, therefore in almost perfect coincidence with the birth of Jesus. Conjunctions are rare and periodic phenomena like comets, and for this reason in ancient times they were thought to announce great events or even cosmic reversals. According to the calculations of modern astronomers, Jupiter and Saturn were in close conjunction in the skies of the Middle East for more than two months, between September 30 and December 7 of the year 7 BC.
How was this possible, given that Jupiter travels in the sky with a motion apparent almost three times faster than Saturn? Because, due to the real motion of the Earth around the Sun, for a good part of this period Jupiter found itself in conditions of retrograde motion, and appeared slower. Precisely this circumstance made the astronomical event we are dealing with exceptional; and it certainly did not escape the priests of Zarathustra, who spent their lives observing the starry sky.
The conjunction became particularly visible on September 30, the date that therefore it must be considered close to that of the birth of Jesus, and it is presumable that the Magi had already set out in advance, having foreseen the event months, if not years in advance. The planet Jupiter has always been linked to royalty, while the planet Saturn was considered a celestial symbol of Jewish people, for whom they associated the event with the birth of a new King of the Jews, and in particular of the Messiah of ancient prophecies.
That the advent of the awaited Messiah was considered imminent is also confirmed by the fact that the Point Equinoctial, due to the Precession of the Equinoxes, was abandoning the constellation of Aries to enter that of Pisces, an event that most persons considered heralding the beginning of a new Era of the World. The previous abandonment of Taurus in favor of Aries had already led to the birth of myths of the Minotaur killed by Theseus, of the Celestial Bull killed by Mithras and the story of the Golden Calf destroyed by Moses; and the passage of the Equinoctial Point from Pisces to Aquarius, scheduled for 2200 AD, gave birth the mythology of the "Age of Aquarius" so dear to modern New Age.
However, incredible to say, the conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn began precisely in the constellation of Pisces! And furthermore, coincidentally, Zarathustra had also predicted the advent of a new Prophet, clearly announced by unequivocal astronomical events. Thus, all this prodigious coincidence of astronomical events pushed the Magi to travel from Babylon to be the first to venerate the Messiah and recognize him as Sovereign of the
new Era of the World that was beginning.
«Where is born the king of the Jews? We have seen his star rise, and we have come to worship him» (Matthew 2.2) the anonymous priests asked King Herodotus, and this indicates how the exceptional astronomical event had already begun at moment of their arrival. Since it ended on December 7, this date represents the final chronological term in which to place the arrival of the Magi a Bethlehem.
Only one thing remains to be said. Most likely the earthly life of Christ, opened by an extraordinary astronomical event, was closed by another not less exceptional event: the total solar eclipse visible from Jerusalem, which occurred on 7 April 30 AD, which according to some explains the well-known «From noon until three in the afternoon it became dark over the whole earth» of Matthew 27.45!
Additional info
In the year Zero C. CESARE (grandson of Augustus) and EMILIUS PAUL are consuls in Rome. Meanwhile, a dynastic struggle is underway in Armenia between ARZABARZANE-ARTAVASDE, two ambitious successors of TIGRANE who repeatedly face each other to dominate this territory.
The traditional date of the birth of Jesus Christ was set by the monk Dionysius the Little in the 6th century to serve as the starting point of the Christian era, and is still in use today; but this appears to have been subject to some errors. According to some historians, there is a gap of about 4 years, so the birth would have occurred in 4 BC before the death of Herodotus I the Great, in conjunction with the evangelical narrative, according to which the Child is born when Herodotus is still alive and ordered the massacre of the innocents, which however is always according to the Gospel (Matthew 3 ,16) being aimed at all children aged two and under, it could move back another two years. (then in 6).
Today we know the day of Herodotus's death: it happened around 4 BC, a few days before a lunar eclipse. On the computer we tracked this eclipse; occurred on the Palestine coordinate exactly on March 13, 4 BC.
We have another historical source. In the Gospel of Luke, in the second chapter, he writes that Jesus was born during the census of Quirinus, governor of Syria in the year 6. Until today this date seemed to be the subject of subsequent confusion because Quirinus was governor in 6 AD and he actually took a census in that year. Today we know that he had made another census in 6 BC not as governor but as a simple official, alongside Sanzio Saturnino; hence the hypothetical error of Luke who forgets to say official instead of governor, embarrassing subsequent historians who for centuries ignored the other census, that of 6 BC.
But we always have a year missing, and this can be attributed both to the many changes in the calendar (the Roman one, when Caesar tried to impose the Egyptian-solar one) and because the birth of Jesus was about a century ago, until 329, celebrated by the Orthodox Church on January 6. In 1917 political Russia adopted our calendar, while religious Russia completely ignored it. Every country and every institution does what it wants.
The mention of a change came from Helena, mother of Constantine, who in 327 went to Palestine in search of evidence of Christianity, listening the oral traditions and legendary narratives, which from that moment on would assume great importance in the popular and religious tradition up to the Middle Ages and then continuing up to the present day (with the discrepancies from country to country, and also from Gospels and Gospels). We owe to Elena the true or presumed discovery of the fragments of the cross, the presumed hut of the nativity, the construction of the Holy Sepulcher and also the name of the locality, called the Holy Land, which from that moment began to become a destination for pilgrimages.
In the year 330 coinciding with the solemn ceremonies and consecration of the new capital of the empire called New Rome (built on ancient Byzantium, then called Constantinople), by will of Constantine it was celebrated for the first time throughout the empire and therefore also in Rome on the day of the Undefeated Christmas (which from now on replaces it) the birth of Jesus. In practice it was decided to bring forward the 6 of January of the year 331 to 25 December in the same year. The anniversary was celebrated twice in the same year, and the latter, that of 25 December, was made to coincide with the traditional pagan festival of the "Birth of the Sun".
This double celebration in a calendar that was still counted as 1079 (the year of the foundation of Rome) transforms the year which virtually becomes 1080. Here is therefore the incorrect count and therefore the seventh year that we are missing and which will make the 'astronomical event that we will mention towards the end; the alleged and elusive comet of Bethlehem which was not a comet..
December 25th is the anniversary of the Nativity as a day of the month but not yet as a year (since this was incorrectly counted) is a symbolic date that connects to the winter solstice and a Roman pagan festival from the imperial era. The Christmas of the Undefeated, which was none other than the Sol Invictus, solar deity of Emesa, or the "day of the new sun" set for December 25th, introduced by Emperor Aure liano in 274 AD, who had also built a temple in his honor in Rome on the Agrippae campus, today Piazza San Silvestro.
It was a period in Rome where the cult of the Sun, including the Egyptian calendar, had already penetrated and been in use since the time of Julius Caesar's campaigns in Egypt. Caesar not only had the obelisks of Heliopolis and other Egyptian cities transported to Rome but had also brought with him the priests of the cult of Helios, who immediately found followers in the capital who they adopted (but many years later), after having abandoned the lunisolar year of Numa, the solar year of the Egyptians, which is the one called Julian, of 12 months, like the current one, except for the correction (elimination) of 10 days, made in 1582 by Pope Gregory, which was not still astronomically accurate: a quarter of a day was missing every year. The leap year system was used, a day to be added every four years, but not in secular years, excluding those divisible by 4 (therefore 1600 and 2000, therefore leap years).
In the previous centuries, again at the behest of Constantine, another change had also taken place in 321, that of the name of the first day of the week; in fact, it was called dominus, (from dominio, lord, therefore domenicus, Sunday). For political-religious reasons of those years and then also of those that followed in the territories of northern Europe (Arianism and secularism) the Orthodox imposition first, and then the Catholic one, failed and Sunday continued to be called "day of the Sun". Both in German and in English, even today, Sunday is the "holiday of the day of the Sun", the current sun-day and soon-tag.
It should be noted that still in 1527 in some mountain valleys of Trentino Alto Adige (Val Tesino), in isolated populations of Latin-Roman origin, it was celebrated, to the horror of the Bishop of Feltre (who visited it for the first time , and prohibited it, under penalty of excommunication) on December 25th the Nativity of the Sun. And even today in a South Tyrolean town in Val Venosta the "birth of the Sun" is celebrated after the night of December 24th. Moreover Sunday in Alto Adige continues to be called "Sun day" = i.e. sontag).
Sunday is first day of the week since Babylonian and Egyptian times and was already called the day of the Sun, followed by that of the Moon (Monday) and then those of the five planets known until then: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn. On March 7, 321 AD, the name Sunday was imposed by Constantine who declared it by law, a day of civil rest, until then a working day for everyone. His edict cites it precisely as "the venerable day of the Sun", even though rest on the first day of the week was already tradition in many eastern regions. In the Acts of the Apostles (40-50s) Luke says "In the first day of the week, the holiday, we had gathered ... etc etc.
However, it is clear in Constantine's desire to imitate the Jewish religion which in turn, following the Old Testament, celebrated the public holiday and therefore the weekly rest on Saturday, probably derived from the day of the full moon (moon new) by the ancient Babylonians called 'Sabpatu' but celebrated by them every 15 days and not every seven.
However, this Christian tradition (the Jews have never recognized the coming of this Messiah) also has the birth of Jesus in common with the ancient religion of the spiritual heirs of Zoroaster; these were handed down from father to son in a writing attributed to Seth where the appearance of a shining star in the sky was prophesied, and there were written instructions on the gifts to be offered to the Savior on that fateful day.
Let us remember that Jewish antiquity attributed the invention of astrological science to Seth, son of Adam. But we know this to be of Babylonian origin (beyond the Eber or Euphrates or Jordan). For this reason in the Near East Seth was easily identified with Zoroaster to whom doctrines of Chaldean origin were attributed, whose scientists were considered the true fathers of astronomy (note not of astrology). And in fact an echo of the attribution is found in the "Arab-Syriac Infancy Gospel" where the prediction of the coming of the Messiah is attributed to Zaradusht-Zoroaster who reports this passage: "...and the Magi came to Jerusalem... as Zaradusht had predicted."
As regards the identification of the year today the Gospel of Matthew comes to our aid, containing such astronomical clarifications that can be defined as true contributions to a treatise on astronomy rather than legend-tradition. Matthew, an educated man, trained at the school of the Chaldeans (were studied the most competent in matters of physical bodies elesti - Chaldean was synonymous with astronomer) describes that event in a precise way, which today we can reconstruct on the computer, we are trying to understand what star accompanied the Magi to the place where Jesus was born and whether that "star of Bethlehem" could have been that Comet which has taken root in the popular collective imagination of recent centuries as a truly true fact.
Historically it is to be excluded, because there is no mention of such a celestial apparition in any Western or Eastern religious text, not even the gospels of Luke, Mark and John (excluding that of the cited Matthew) which not only mention the comet but do not make any reference not even to a star.
The whole story of the comet originates from a painting by Giotto, which in 1301 was in the Scrovegni Chapel; next to the Nativity, he paints the Epiphany and places a comet above the hut. In the year 1301, in December, shortly before the date of the traditional nativity, the famous Halley's Comet (then very bright and flashy) appeared in the sky; celestial phenomenon which, however, has nothing to do with the famous date of the birth of Jesus, and which today with the computerized reconstruction of celestial movements, instead confirms what Matthew wrote of a large bright star.
More simply, it was the conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn, which due to diffraction of light (5 times more than the sum of the two light sources taken individually) appears in the sky almost like a single star; a phenomenon that occurs every 854 years.
These two planets simultaneously appear very close in the sky and increasingly brighter. The two stars had been approaching for several nights, but only when they were very close did they begin to be noticed. Observing the phenomenon of the conjunction, one has the impression of a large double star, or that a new star has been born; so much so that the Chinese (who recorded this phenomenon in their annals!) confused it with a supernova star. And it was considered as such until recently, given that the Chinese annals record it precisely in the year 7, and give us confirmation of this curious very bright phenomenon in the sky.
Instead it was the "great conjunction" the long-awaited event that the three wise astronomer-priests of Babylonian origin were waiting for (the Magi, let's not forget, were the priests who guarded the sacred fire of Zarathustra).
The event had a particular prophetic religious meaning. Jupiter was the star symbol of the Babylonian god Marduk, and Saturn was the star symbol of Israel. For both, this meant the much desired religious reunification of the two great peoples in perpetual friction. The interpreted event was that of the Hebrew message: "In Bethlehem, a small land of Judah, the Chief (Messiah) who will guide my people will be born (between 7+7+7 and 14+14+14 generations)." The Jews recognized in this event what was predicted in the Old Testament, while the Israelites (fighting with the Jews) denied this "arrival" (in fact, it was they who later had Jesus condemned as an impostor).
Let's go back to the phenomenon. Matthew writes
"The Magi set out towards the west following the direction of the large bright star, which showed them the way to Jerusalem, but they found nothing there. Pausing in the night and with their eyes fixed on the sky, they realized that the star this time indicated the new direction, towards the south, towards Bethlehem".
In fact the two planets are arranged east-west then they almost meet, and seem to stop, and in this phase they radiate a great light in the sky, then they take (reverse) the new route, west-south.
The astronomical explanation is very simple: the two planets in the apparent orbital rings seen from the Earth, approach right west and left east, intersect, appear to us to be motionless for two nights (and very bright) then in the path backwards continue towards left south and right north. In practice, the Three Wise Men first saw Jerusalem (west) pointed to them, then when they arrived in this city, they saw the star indicating Bethlehem (south).
Take a computer, insert a good astronomical program, go back more than two thousand years day by day; with great patience scroll through all the 731,142 starry nights that have passed on the celestial coordinate of Jerusalem, and with great emotion you will see this incontrovertible scientific thesis confirmed, you will discover that the phenomenon occurred every 854 years, in 1702, in 854, and on the day ( the emotion rises when you are in and last starry nights of the virtual firmament) on November 13 of the year 7 BC.
Over the centuries (aside from the errors), various shifts in calendars have been recorded, but today, without taking into account the civil ones in use in various countries, the astronomical one is used. This starts from January 1, 4713 BC. All subsequent days are simply numbered progressively without grouping them into months or years. With this system, the univocal (therefore mathematical) dating of all celestial phenomena is simple and therefore a possible chronological intercalation of any "historical" document that contains references to such phenomena recorded in the news in the past. A point of reference today accepted by all world astronomical circles of every culture and tradition.
The historicity of Jesus, his destiny and the essential features of the doctrine can be considered ascertained, however the state of the sources does not allow us to trace an exact placement of dates and therefore not even a true historical biography of Jesus, and above all to know his inner development, the evolution of his self-awareness.
The sources are the four synoptic gospels of Matthew, Luke, Mark, John and other apocrypha, plus some "indirect" references in Roman historiographers such as Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger. The traditional date, however, remains in use as a conventional term in history books, in theology and in the daily life of every Western nation including all those that have relations with them today.
